This poem is taken from PN Review 240, Volume 44 Number 4, March - April 2018.
Love’s Labours Won
LOVE'S LABOURS WON
Unlike the vanished Hamlet, this
loss would have been a comedy:
five funny acts, to take the piss
out of that monster, love –
an ancient vice, like poetry,
which no one is above.
Pinched from a dog-eared chronicle
picked off the barrows at St. Paul’s,
the plot remains untraceable
though if compelled, I’d guess
that it involved strains, dying falls
and someone saying yes.
The scene is equally obscure:
a blank utopia no art
of reconstruction can restore;
...
Unlike the vanished Hamlet, this
loss would have been a comedy:
five funny acts, to take the piss
out of that monster, love –
an ancient vice, like poetry,
which no one is above.
Pinched from a dog-eared chronicle
picked off the barrows at St. Paul’s,
the plot remains untraceable
though if compelled, I’d guess
that it involved strains, dying falls
and someone saying yes.
The scene is equally obscure:
a blank utopia no art
of reconstruction can restore;
...
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